Advent 4 - SALVATION Isaiah 42:1, 5-7
18/12/22
Scripture
Questions
“There is unanimous agreement that chapters 40–66 address an entirely different set of historical and interpretational issues from the first thirty-nine chapters. They no longer emphasize the punishment of the wicked that will lead to the Babylonian exile, but there is a clear message of encouragement to a righteous remnant who return from exile around 539 BC, almost 150 years after Isaiah.”1
42:1-4 is the first servant song of Isaiah. The others are 49:1-6, 50:4-9, and 52:13-53:12. Jewish friends understand the servant to be Israel but there is something else going on!
1 Look! here is my servant; I hold him, my chosen one, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit on him; he will bring justice forth to the nations. 2 He will not cry out and lift up and make his voice heard in the street. 3 He will not break a broken reed, and he will not extinguish a dim wick. He will bring justice forth in faithfulness. 4 He will not grow faint, and he will not be broken until he has established justice in the earth. And the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Read Matthew 12:18-21 where, lest you have any doubt, Isaiah 42:1-4 is quoted as being fulfilled by Jesus. Matthew is quoting from the LXX which interpretsʾiyyîm2 [“coastlands”] as the ἔθνη [“nations”]. What is point of this clarification?
The Dead Sea Scrolls adds “his” before “justice” in v1 to further emphasise that the servant is male. Israel is usually referred to as a male plural or sometimes a feminine singular3. Jewish friends say that the “servant” is Israel. How might we respond?
List some of the characteristics of the servant in vv2-4.
Is there a sense in which the Jewish reading is correct? See, for example, Ezekiel 36:27. How would you reconcile this with what actually happened? Is Israel the nation or Jesus? Can it be both?
5 Thus says the God, YHWH, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it.
The first parallelism has the spreading out of the heavens and the earth. What are “the heavens and the earth” [Genesis 1:1]? This is called a merism. What encouragement was this to the exiles who had returned to the land?
God gives life, i.e. “breath” and “spirit”, to all people and animals. How should this effect the way we see the world around us?
6 “I am YHWH; I have called you [masculine singular] in righteousness, and I have grasped your [masculine singular] hand and watched over you [masculine singular]; and I have given you [masculine singular] as a covenant of the people, as a light of the nations,
YHWH is addressing Jesus. What is the “covenant” YHWH made with Abraham [Genesis 12:1-3, 15:1-20, 17:1-27]? How did Jesus make a [re]new[ed] covenant [Matthew 26:28]?
7 to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoner out from the dungeon, those who sit in darkness from the house of imprisonment.
What are all these metaphors ["blind eyes”, “dungeon”, “darkness” and “house of imprisonment”] describing? How were you “rescued…from the domain of darkness and transferred…to the kingdom of the Son” [Colossians 1:13]?
More
Douglas Mangum, ed., Lexham Context Commentary: Old Testament, Lexham Context Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), Is 40:1–66:24.
“אִי (ʾî), N. coast, island. Greek equiv. fr. LXX: νῆσος.” Rick Brannan, ed., Lexham Research Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible, Lexham Research Lexicons (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).
יִשְׂרָאֵל [Yiśrāʾēl] is a proper noun and as such has no gender.